by Jason Ayres
Finally, in sport, Oxford United have sacked their manager following another poor start to the season…”
Jess switched off the radio. She had a pretty strong hunch that it was Dan who they were talking about. It all added up. Not only did he fit the description, but she also knew that he used to live in St Margaret’s Close.
It couldn’t just be a coincidence. The time bubble team had already discussed this in detail, imagining possible scenarios of what might happen to Dan after he came out of the tunnel.
This was one of the reasons Charlie and Kaylee had offered to stay with her the previous night. They had been concerned for her safety, just in case Dan tried to come back to the house. It was, after all, the last place he had been 22 years ago, and it was possible he might try to retrace his steps.
Hearing the report on the radio had made her feel quite vulnerable. She knew all about Dan’s past, and if he was going around breaking into houses and mugging people, who knows what he might do next in his state of desperation?
With thoughts of what happened to Lauren in her head, she decided that perhaps she ought to call Charlie and Kaylee and ask them to come over after all.
Chapter Twelve
September 2063
Fully rested after a good night’s sleep, Dan felt ready to face the world again. The previous evening he had been so relieved to reach the safety of the hotel room that he had fallen asleep almost immediately, thankful that the immediate nightmare was over.
Now, awake and sitting in bed, he could at last think clearly about the situation.
The layout of the hotel room was reassuringly familiar. It seemed to Dan that such rooms had not changed much with the passing of the years. Then again, this hotel had been on the site for as long as Dan could remember. This room had probably been built decades ago and never upgraded. It was certainly a cheap and cheerful place.
The shape of the room was exactly the same as many he had encountered in the past. When he had entered the room, he had found that the bathroom was on the left in a short passage just beyond the door. The room then opened out beyond the end of the wall which contained the bathroom. The bed was on the left-hand side of the room with the window directly in front of him, opposite the door.
On the right was a wooden desk, and built into the wall was a touch screen television. On the desk was a familiar-looking tray containing sachets of coffee, tea bags, and various accompaniments. There had also been some individually wrapped packs of biscuits, but Dan had devoured them when he had got in the previous night.
Next to the tray was a cheap, white, plastic, kettle of the type many retailers offered in their budget ranges. It was all very plain and ordinary, but plain and ordinary was what Dan needed right now.
When he’d woken up he’d checked the clock to discover he’d slept for twelve hours solid. This had left him with an urgent need to empty his bladder.
After that, he’d eventually managed to make a cup of tea after waiting for what seemed like about half an hour for the kettle to boil. Now he was sitting back in bed beneath a cheap print of a vase with some daffodils in it, drinking his cheap and vile tea. It was made from a brand of tea bag he had never heard of, UHT milk and, of course, his customary three sugars.
It was clear the only way he was going to get some answers about what had happened to him was to track down the perpetrators. He could not see any other way he was going to be able to get out of this predicament.
Mulling it over in his mind, he’d narrowed the suspects down to a shortlist of five. This effectively became four, if, as Jones had told him, Hannah was dead. Of those four, he didn’t fancy his chances of finding Peter again. His vanishing act in the tunnel, along with his changing appearance, suggested he had probably also travelled to a different time.
He wasn’t going to waste any time trying to work out where or when that was: it would be pure speculation.
That left Jess, Charlie and Josh. He had no idea how to go about finding the latter two. He had barely seen either of them in the last few years before his leap through time.
Finding out where they lived or worked wasn’t going to be easy with his current lack of resources. Although the hotel offered internet access via the touch screen, he had no idea of how to even begin operating it. The inevitable advances in technology since his time had rendered him completely unfamiliar with the interface. He suspected it was probably voice-operated. His experiences with such technology since arriving in the future had been unhappy ones. He decided to leave it well alone for now.
Without a home, little money and no way of identifying himself, things were not looking particularly promising. He also had the additional worry that the police were probably still looking for him, particularly after he’d robbed the woman on the bus.
That meant he could not risk trying to get into any of his old bank accounts or email addresses, in the unlikely event that they even still existed after all this time. The police would be bound to be watching. As for social media, if it even still existed in any recognisable form, that was off-limits, too. Anything he did was bound to leave a trace. No, he would have to forget about looking for Josh and Charlie for the time being.
So that left Jess as his only realistic lead. At least he had a starting point for her. He could go back to the house where the party had been held and find out if she still lived there. Even if she didn’t, he might be able to get a forwarding address. It wasn’t a great deal to go on, but it was a start.
Finishing his cheap and nasty cup of tea, he realised that he was ravenously hungry. This wasn’t an unusual feeling for Dan. He loved food but today he was exceptionally hungry. All he’d had the previous day was chocolate and biscuits, and that wasn’t enough. He needed meat.
Fortunately, his room rate included the buffet breakfast downstairs. Flicking through the hotel welcome guide in his room, he discovered that breakfast was served from 7am to 10am. It was 8.15am, which gave him plenty of time to indulge himself.
He took a shower, got dressed, scraped the last of the dog mess off his shoes, and headed on down to the restaurant.
He stopped at the entrance by a sign that said, “Please wait to be seated” and cast his eyes around the restaurant. Apart from a few business types, it wasn’t busy at all. It was very quiet, the only sounds being the clinking of spoons on cups and the radio playing in the background, an old pop hit that he recognised from the 2020s.
He realised that, although Jones had told him the date, he had no idea what day of the week it was. He guessed it must be a weekday, but which one?
He looked around to see if there were any newspapers in the room but he couldn’t see any. He would have to ask.
The waitress approached, a slim, short, middle aged-woman with grey hair tied up in a bun. She was dressed in the all-black uniform of the hotel chain. She smiled and asked him for his room number.
As she led him to the table, Dan asked, “Do you have any newspapers?”
“Do you mean printed newspapers?” she replied, looking at him with a faint look of amusement. “No, we haven’t had them for years.”
“Never mind,” said Dan. The way she’d looked at him, he may as well have asked for a wax tablet.
“Would you like tea or coffee?” she asked.
“Oh coffee, definitely,” he replied. It would take away the taste of the foul tea he had drunk earlier.
“All your cereals are over there,” she said, “and help yourself to the hot buffet as soon as you are ready,” she said.
“I will,” said Dan, “thank you.” And he certainly intended to. He was going to load himself up with as much food as he could lay his hands on. The hotel room had cost him most of the cash he’d stolen the previous day, and he had no idea when he might eat again.
With everything laid out on trays, he could be as greedy as he liked. Dan had always had a gluttonous streak and any sort of “Eat as much as you like” buffet always brought out the worst in him.
By the time
he sat back down, he was eagerly ready to devour what lay in front of him: four sausages, five rashers of bacon, three fried eggs, three slices of black pudding, beans, mushrooms, and four slices of toast. A breakfast fit for a king, Dan thought to himself.
It didn’t take long to wolf it all down, and he still found room for a pain-au-chocolat and a Danish pastry for dessert. When the waitress wasn’t looking, he also slipped a banana into his pocket for later. He ignored the notice that read: “Please may we respectfully ask guests not to remove food from the restaurant”.
He would have liked to have taken more, but unfortunately there wasn’t much you could smuggle out in a pair of jeans that had been a waist size too small for him when he’d entered the restaurant, which now felt more like two.
As he was finishing his pastry, the news came onto the radio: the same bulletin that Jess was listening to on the other side of town.
Nervously he looked around him, and then down at the Wasps shirt he was wearing. No one seemed to be taking much notice. He reassured himself by thinking, why would they? A travelling businessman sitting in a hotel hearing a news story about some local escaped prisoner was hardly likely to be expecting to encounter him over his cornflakes.
The waitress was also busying herself taking orders and was apparently taking no notice of the news on the radio.
Reassured, and fully loaded up with food, Dan felt ready to face the world. Those that had conspired against him were about to find out they had messed with the wrong man.
Checkout was swift and efficient, and by 10am he was on his way, heading back into town on foot with only one destination in mind: the house where the party had taken place 22 years ago. That was where all his troubles had started.
Now he was intending to bring them to an end.
Chapter Thirteen
September 2063
When the doorbell rang, Jess jumped up eagerly from the kitchen table where she’d been drinking her coffee and reading the morning’s “newspaper”. Like most people in the mid-21st century, she read hers through the built-in touchpad in the kitchen table. It was still possible to get a few paper copies in specialist outlets, but they were disappearing fast.
It was no wonder that Dan’s request for a paper in the restaurant had been met with such bemusement.
Fearful that Dan might try to track her down after what she had heard on the radio, she had rung Charlie and Kaylee straightaway. Kaylee was in a holographic conference with her weather control project team in Australia, but Charlie had promised to come over right away.
“That was quick,” she thought to herself, not expecting him to arrive so soon. Without thinking, she flung open the front door, only to be confronted by the aggressive and intimidating figure of Dan on the doorstep.
Horrified, she tried to slam the door in his face, but it was too late: he was already pushing his way in.
“Oh no you don’t,” he said, looking closely at her face as she retreated away from him towards the stairs. “We’ve got some unfinished business.”
He had recognised her instantly, but couldn’t help noticing the difference 22 years had made. Her face was showing unmistakeable signs of aging, with lines in places where before there had only been smooth, youthful skin.
“You’ve let yourself go, you wrinkly bitch,” he remarked cruelly.
“And you’re still an ugly, fat twat,” she responded.
Jess may have been terrified, but she was full of the gutsy spirit she’d inherited from her mother.
Dan grabbed her tightly by her wrists and wheeled her around. They were at the foot of the stairs, directly behind the front door and he was keen to get her out of sight. Letting go of one arm briefly, he slammed the door, then taking hold of her again, he pushed her through the open doorway that led into the living room.
“Get in there!” he shouted. “You’ve got some explaining to do. Now sit down and start talking.” He pushed her backwards onto the sofa.
Jess thought quickly. Charlie was on his way, she knew that. She also knew what Dan was capable of. He might be stronger than her, but she knew that she had one big advantage over him. It was all a matter of time and she had a 22-year head start over him. She was confident that he would have no idea about the latest implants that had more or less taken the place of mobile phones.
Silently, without there being any way of him knowing, she activated the emergency call button directly from her brainwaves. She was now connected to the emergency services and he wouldn’t have the slightest inkling that they’d be listening in to every word. It was a far more effective form of defence than the old rape alarms that women had carried in the past.
Help would certainly be coming from some quarter. Who would get there first, Charlie or the police, she didn’t know. All she knew was that now she had to play for time.
She did her best to recover her composure and asked him, “What…what do you want to know?” deliberately stammering over the first word to create the appearance that she was more nervous than she actually was.
Her line of reasoning was that if he thought she was in his power and no threat to him, he’d be lulled into a false sense of security and would be less likely to harm her.
“You set me up,” accused Dan. “You and the others who were at that party tricked me into coming down to that tunnel with you and then somehow you sent me forward 22 years in time.”
Jess thought about how best to reply. In front of her retina she could see a red light blinking. The emergency services were listening in. She had to play this very carefully. She couldn’t admit to knowing anything about time travel: her best bet was to deny everything and make them believe she was dealing with some sort of madman.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied. “Are you seriously suggesting that you’ve somehow travelled through time?”
“Look at me,” he said. “When did you last see me? 22 years ago. Do I look any older?”
She gave a deliberately vague answer. “Some people age faster than others,” she said. “I can’t really remember what you looked like before, to be honest, or how long ago it was since I last saw you. It’s been donkey’s years.
She paused and then added “In fact, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I heard somewhere that you were dead.”
This wasn’t a lie. His mysterious disappearance all those years ago hadn’t gone unnoticed. She’d heard it mentioned a few times afterwards in general gossip around the town. A few years later her mother had told her that he’d been declared officially dead.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” replied Dan. “You know exactly what’s going on here and I want to know the truth. You had better start talking, because you’re not going anywhere until you do.”
“I don’t know anything, I’ve told you. What do you expect me to say? You barge into my house with some crazy tale about being a time traveller, and now you’re taking me hostage. Have you gone completely mad?”
That ought to be enough to get the police despatched to her location, thought Jess, remembering the radio report from earlier. This would be the second time in two days he’d forced his way into somebody’s house. Hopefully they would keep a tighter hold on him this time.
“You do know something, you were all in it together,” replied Dan. “You, that teacher, Charlie and Josh. And you are going to tell me, or else,” he added.
“Or else what?” she replied. “You’ll kill me, like you did Lauren?”
That was really hitting below the belt but it was effective. She could see the shock in his face as it hit home. Perhaps she had gone too far.
Dan felt the guilt that had haunted him for so long over Lauren’s death come flooding back. It didn’t make him merely remorseful this time, though, it also made him very angry. How dare she?
“Why, you little slag,” he said, moving towards her. She shrank back on the sofa. Gutsy she may have been, but now she was beginning to fear for her life. Fortunately at that mo
ment, the doorbell rang.
Stopping abruptly, just as he was about to grab her, he hissed, “Who’s that?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Probably just a drone making a delivery. I’m waiting in for an order.”
“Answer it,” he said. “And if it’s not a delivery, get rid of whoever it is. And don’t try anything silly. I’ll be right behind you.”
She got up, walked back through the doorway into the hallway, and opened the front door. Standing in front of her was Charlie.
“Hi, Jess,” said Charlie. “Is everything OK?”
“Don’t come in!” she shouted. “He’s found me!”
“You stupid cow,” shouted Dan, rushing into the hallway, now brandishing a kitchen knife. He pushed Jess back onto the stairs behind him, and held the knife out threateningly towards Charlie who was standing in front of him.
“Well, what a surprise, fancy you turning up as well, and looking so old,” remarked Dan, sarcastically. “Get in here. I want to talk to you.”
Charlie held his ground on the doorstep.
“Calm down, Dan,” he said. “Clearly you’re very confused about something. Now why don’t you put the knife down and tell me what’s been going on?”
“You know full well what’s been going on!” he shouted, seemingly becoming increasingly deranged. “You and your mates tricked me into travelling in time and now I’m stuck here in the future with no home and no money and I want to go back. And if you don’t help me, I’ll kill the pair of you.”
That was the trigger the police needed. They had arrived at the same time as Charlie. Together they had agreed that they would remain out of sight while Charlie checked out what was happening.
Unseen by Dan, they were listening on the pavement, crouched down below the four foot-high hedge that ran along the front of the garden.
“Get down, Charlie,” shouted Jones. He hadn’t taken any chances this time and had come prepared. There was no way Dan was going to evade him again.
Before Dan could react, Charlie ducked out of the way. Jones stepped into view and fired the latest hi-tech Taser device directly into Dan’s chest. The weapon was incredibly accurate, guided by the latest tracking technology developed by the military. Even Jones, a notoriously bad darts player, couldn’t miss.